My first impressions of the cultural landscape in Japan began in late June 1984 when arriving with about 100 other young U.S.A. college graduates selected as assistant English teachers for the junior and senior high schools for each of the 47 prefectures. Over the decades and numerous periods of language study, fieldwork, employment and residence experiences in a handful of locations around the islands, my interest and ability to identify traces of older activity still visible on the ground has grown stronger.
During 2016 and 2017 while working in rural Fukui-prefecture, I spent free time very often bicycling, walking, or riding with others to see nearby parts of the valley, almost always accompanied by my camera and/or cellphone to document elements of the streetscapes and landscape that caught my eye and made me wonder how this relic or that ruin came to be as it is in a particular place and time. Without doing the interviewing and historical research, though, my interpretations online and later in ebook form were very general, keyed to general social history and developments in technology, as well as sporadic conversations with local experts from time to time.
Reflecting on this past Japan project in visually documenting the cultural landscape past and present, I remembered a quote attributed to the author of “near future” worlds, William Gibson,
The future is already here — it’s just not evenly distributed.
This uneven distribution of cultural elements and developments — rural versus urban, early adopter versus late adopter, and so on — would seem to apply not just to the future, but also for the persisting physical presence and processes and personal perspectives rooted to earlier worldviews and ways of accomplishing things large or small. In other words, rephrasing Gibson:
The past is still here — it’s just not evenly distributed.
After seeing this parallel between the hints of future culture and society, along with traces of the past culture and society, my next thought was to wonder what it could my keen interest in scattered and sometimes hidden evidence of lives now gone be all about. Digging into the source of my attraction to the subject, the question can be put, “where does this desire come from; what is the root that spurs action.” Condensed to a single word: WHY (or the archaic form, wherefore)? Perhaps the same question can be asked about how a graduate student comes to a specific research topic; what starts an author on a particular project; or, why does a visual artist arrive at a certain subject that attracts their attention.
In the case of my delight in spotting bits of past life while pedaling or walking along with camera in hand, maybe the thrill is in the chase. By being vigilant and presuming that clues are just waiting to be noticed, it is something like a hunter or tracking guide who reads the landscape for signs that signify the object of the search. Or, again, it is like a detective piecing together a scene of crime. Archaeologists do something similar in excavating surfaces and sometimes digging much deeper to form a picture of life activities across very long periods, in some cases. Then by recording and adding commentary there comes another kind of satisfaction in communicating the discovery with others, “look what I found.” And while all of this pursuit is in a place far from my own language and society, the same dynamics should apply in my own neighborhood or in a place never visited before but still within the boundaries of my own country.
Turning from the question of “why,” there is another, related question. The phrase, “if that it were…” is the archaic subjunctive part of English used to wonder how things might conclude. It is a sort of hypothetical frame for talking and thinking. In the example of reading the (rural) Japanese landscape of past or present, the project is by no means comprehensive of the whole country, and the next logical step is to use the same wandering approach elsewhere on the islands in order to produce some comparative observations about the historical presence of earlier economy and society. That planning and eventual travel to selected locations is a bigger undertaking than just casually biking around the valley that surrounded my place of employment. So it is worth asking, “if that it were (accomplished, pictures in hand and commentary composed), then what new realization or perspective might perhaps result”? Condensed to a single word: DONE? Put another way, as a result of the project being complete, “so what” of significance or larger understanding might be expected or envisioned.
In the case of my interest in closely looking at streetscapes and (rural) landscapes of Japan, as a result of venturing here and there and stopping to record sights as they catch my eye or prompt me to reflect, there is a variety of worthwhile knowledge that could come forth. Possibly a set of similarities and/or differences will contribute to better definition and characterization of one region by comparison to another. After all, the decades did not pass just the same way for residents of each part of the country being sampled in the project. By seeing recurring elements of the cultural landscape (things most often preserved by chance or left on purpose versus ones that are rarely found trace of today) some sort of meaning could be distilled. At the most obvious level, too, any publication that comes from the project will establish a baseline moment in time from the visual record; a frozen snapshot. Local residents may be amused to see what a non-Japanese seizes upon for significance. Japanese who never knew the places recorded may also find some interest in the methodology and turn to wander with camera their own surroundings. People far away from Japan may find the collection of words and pictures to provide a non-traditional window to the cultural landscape, too.
In addition to scrutinizing the photo ethnography project for WHY and for DONE, there is a third question to ask. Now that motivation and resulting value of the project have been probed, there is also the question of what to do after this work has been accomplished. Condensed to a single word: NEXT? Put another way, what sorts of work naturally extend or elaborate on this visual observation from Japan’s mainly rural towns and their surroundings.
In the case of slow-speed noticing, recording, and reflecting on the cultural landscape of Japan today, there are a couple of natural extensions to consider. One is to use the same mix of words and images, but instead of the eye of a detective alert to hints of the past way of life, now the object is to capture scenes of the present-day cultural patterns, rhythms, textures, and elements undergoing change, as well as ones that persist largely unchanging from earlier times. In other words, rather than hunting for bit of the past lying about, the goal is to share with readers a set of cultural footnotes that describe things that perhaps are unremarkable to insiders and invisible/unnoticed by outsiders; and also, to relate some of the meanings in the photo to larger meanings in the society and language, as well. Another natural next step is to transpose these methods to places surrounding my own part of the world in USA. Once translated into the new cultural landscape, then taking it on the road to regional centers across the nation might produce good results, both for local residents and for the interest of foreign readers, too. The third way to take the project to its next step is to move the operation to a third country; neither Japan, nor USA, but somewhere like the UK, for instance. A fourth way might be to narrow down the scale of terrain and the thematic interest to historical (or prehistorical) sites of armed conflict, natural or human-caused disaster to abide in the terrain in search of traces, once more, of earlier events and lives.
This essay has walked through a project in process, but along the way the discussion has pointed to three major questions that add structure and meaning to the enterprise. The first asks “why: what underlies this zeal”? The second asks, “done: imagine the project is accomplished and fully formed results are now in hand — what of value is produced”? (leaving aside inherent value in the doing; the process experienced itself) The last question asks, “next: now that the original design is done, what could or should or would be good to follow up”? Even when this rural Japan project is completed and the work is closed, these three questions will remain open since they can usefully be applied to the readers’ own projects now underway or one’s daydreamed for someday yet to come.
